Reflection
I am zoo zebra
at dream watering hole
drinking myself
wild again
Farley (0:25 w/ acrostic explanation)
For a brother
Are you finally resting?
Raging humanity owes you
Lost children are found
Every time
You appear
Discouraged (0:30)
Don’t be discouraged, friend
I was once where you are now
Stuck in the bottom of an unmarked well
Climbing the walls inside my head
Orbiting the thought I’d be better off dead. But squatting here
Under the bridge of our life the
River runs with no mind at all
Allow your wave to flow just
Go
Every lap another chance to
Discover courage
(“Correction line” is a land surveying term)
Correction Lines (1:20)
Uncivil engineers
They bar the long stare of country air
They shrink the big sky
Slice it in strips
Wild order lost
To right angles and city blocks stacked high
A road to nowhere
Divided sky
We turn on the news to learn our future
Blind to the cloudy bones of the sky
The crystal cube tells us all we need to know
Oh yes, strength in numbers
And walls veiled thick
Mortar and brick
Give us small windowpanes caged in iron.
But, to leave tall castle walls
To take the long view back
Through empty field or along meandering stream
A baptism
Falling back into deep currents
Floating, chest held high
A field of vision
Filled by unbroken heavens
(Years ago, in commemoration of my first semester of teaching freshman composition (at 7:30 a.m. CST), on the final day I had each student write down a single word on a scrap of paper: a free association on the class. I made a poem from them. Student words are in ALL CAPS. Since you can’t see my paper, I will raise my hand for them.)
STRONGER (1:30)
sometimes I’m a big DOPE
and think it all SUPERFLUOUS
but I know that is just CRAZY
where is the SUNSHINE? is it not the time?
there is a hole where our clock should be (true story)
how will we know when it’s time to go?
focus can be so CHALLENGING
when the dark whispers: go to sleep
must pull myself from the dream
wander the GREEN when class is done
a ghost among trees and rising sun
a foggy memory
one time I held a beautiful leaf
your silent words were heard by me
across dawning space
I see JACQUES
he WAVES hello
stripped of the dark
unPREDICTABLE and FREE
something ASTONISHING
in our EARLY morning mind
unveiled mystery
newborn PEACE
the light we find
when we FINALLY make it
to the other side
Sustainer 